


The Times, They Are A Changin'

by Todesengel



Series: Overs-verse [10]
Category: Voltron: Lion Voltron
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-28
Updated: 2013-05-28
Packaged: 2017-12-13 05:44:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/820676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Todesengel/pseuds/Todesengel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hunk is Hunk, Sven is guilty and conflicted, and Snorri wants to behead something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Times, They Are A Changin'

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mendax](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mendax/gifts).



It took a week before all the shine rubbed off of Hunk's new life and Sven realized that he'd gone from the lap of luxury to chopping mountains of firewood every morning so that they didn't freeze at night – since, of course, Hunk had to pick the one planet where summer really _did_ only last for three days and the other four hundred and fifty spanned the spectrum from "overnight frost" to "hell hath frozen over". And of course Hunk had to set up shop – quite literally, actually, since apparently the little pharmacy/general store/bar/mechanic's shop in the little enclave Hunk persisted in calling a "town" belonged to Hunk – in the one place on this frozen planet where it was nigh-on impossible to get enough power to simultaneously run both a conventional heating system and the blessed com units that created the ever so small tether to the real world.

And he thought Keith's place was rustic.

Hunk lived in...a cabin. Yes, that was the best word for it, even though Sven's mind kept trying to spell cabin as "shack". He'd lived in shacks before, and Hunk's place was too big for "shack" – though only just. For starters, shacks typically did not have guest rooms. 

Or gourmet kitchens. 

And that, more or less, was the source of the problem.

The guest room, that is, not the kitchen.

The real problem, of course, was that Sven didn't know how to, well, _do_ this. All of his other conquests – even the drunken one-night stands – had been...

Well, he won't say accidents, because they weren't. Not exactly. They just sort of happened without any real thought or effort on his part. It was almost like he tripped and fortuitously landed on a willing partner. He'd never had to seduce someone before, and it seemed as though Hunk wanted seducing. 

That or someone to chop his firewood and compliment his cooking and drink beer with and talk about the "good old days"; of which there were, perhaps, twelve in Sven's opinion. 

He called Lance somewhere in the middle of week two, once his arms no longer screamed like frightened little girls when he tried to move them higher than his chest. 

"So," Lance said, "how's it going?" 

Sven glared at him and Lance had the audacity to grin like the evil sadist that he secretly was. 

"That good, eh?"

"I need help," Sven said.

"With what? Keeping the lube unfrozen?" Lance's smile broadened and became a leer. "What you have to do, see, is keep the tube in a pocket for the whole day so it stays all liquid-y and such. And then, you have to –"

"Not that," Sven growled, and then sighed. Funny. He hadn't known that extreme sexual frustration made him snappish. Or, well, he supposed he did given that there was the year without sex while Romelle was busy being pregnant with Snorri, but back then he'd had people to kill.

He kind of missed being able to kill people, right now. 

"I have a problem. I don't know how to," he waved his hands as a means of illustrating just how bad at the whole seduction thing he really was, "do this."

"The man-sex?" Lance gave him a pitying look. "Sven, it's kind of like riding a bike." He paused to think and then added. "Actually, it's a lot like riding a bike, except your legs don't get all sore and you usually don't have to wear a helmet."

"No, it's—" Sven rubbed a hand through his hair. "I don't know how to seduce people."

This time, Lance's look was a combination of both pity and disbelief. "So you haven't—" 

Sven shook his head. 

"And he hasn't—"

Another headshake. 

Lance whistled silently and then frowned. "What do you mean you don't know how to seduce people? How the hell did you ever get laid?"

"I was always the, er, seducee," Sven said. "Hell, you should know that. You seduced me the very first day you met me."

Lance raised a skeptical eyebrow. "I gave you a hangover remedy and told you I had a fantastic ass."

"Right." Sven nodded. "Seduction."

"Sven, I think we need to have a little talk about the meaning of that word—" Lance began, and as he spoke a door closed in the distance and the far away sound of Keith calling Lance's name made him stop. 

"In here," Lance called back, leaning slightly out of frame. "I'm talking with Sven."

"Has he been fucked into a mattress yet? And tell him to watch out for frostbite."

Lance turned back to the screen. "So, Keith says hi."

"I heard him." Sven fiddled with the controls. "This was a bad idea."

"Hold on, I may have an idea," Lance began, but Sven hung up before he could hear what it was. 

*

Two days later, when Snorri showed up at Hunk's door, scowling like only a teenage Crown Prince who knew he was immune from all conventional punishments (and some unconventional ones too, if it came to that) could, Sven was desperately wishing he'd stayed on the line long enough to yell at Lance for the absolute insanity of this idea. It had been – what? Six months? Eight? A whole year? – since he'd last seen his son and time had not been kind to the boy. Snorri was sporting a fairly impressive collection of pimples and what Sven could only assume was the start of facial hair – that or some sort of hairy moss had started to colonize his son's face. 

"Look," Snorri said, in his best "put upon teenager" voice, "I'm only here because Uncle Keith and Uncle Lance kept making out on the couch which is just so gross and Pidge wouldn't pick up the phone." Snorri pushed past Sven and dropped his duffle on the floor. "Also, Uncle Hunk said it was ok."

"Um," Sven said. He shut the door and stared at the back of his son's head. "It's, uh. It's good to see you Snorri."

"It's Marcus," Snorri snapped, and Sven could hear the eye roll. "Jeeze."

Sven sighed and tried to remember what it was like to be – how old was Snorri now anyway? By Earth calendars he was only seven, but how did that translate into his half-Polluxian physiology? Was he fifteen? Sixteen? In hindsight the actual age didn't matter, but from the hazy recollections of his own teenage years, he recalled that the single year between the two had seemed vast and insurmountable. For starters, at sixteen you were one year closer to no longer being the Dancing Queen. 

Sven decided that he would never, ever, ever mention that little thought to anybody. Ever. Especially not Lance. 

Which would probably mean no more drinking binges with Lance, but at his age, that could only be an additional perk. 

"So," Sven said, his hand still on the doorknob. "Um. What are you doing here Snor – Sorry. Marcus."

"Mom was being a bitch," Snorri said, and Sven's hand moved automatically to slap his son on the back of the head. 

"Don't talk about your mother like that."

"Why not? You do."

"It's different." Sven said. "Besides, she's not my mother."

"Whatever." 

Hunk chose that exact moment to bustle up to them – and when had he learned to bustle, Sven wondered – and wrap Snorri in the kind of hug Sven was no longer allowed to give him. "Marcus! You're here! Come on, you're in the guest room."

Sven trailed along behind them, wincing at the thought of having to share the not-really-all-that-big guest room with a two-legged mess of acne, hormones and angst. It came, therefore, as something of a shock to see that the guestroom was rather conspicuously free of all of his things. 

"I moved you into my room," Hunk said in a low, rumbling murmur as they left Snorri to unpack his things. "I hope you don't mind."

In that moment, Sven could have kissed Lance, with a lot of tongue and a fair bit of groping, and not even minded if Keith took his head off afterwards. 

Exactly twelve hours later, Sven mentally replaced "kiss" with "ripping that bastard's head off" and "tongue and groping" with "mutilating his headless corpse". 

Despite his vast and detailed personal experience with torture, Sven had never realized that sleeping in a king-sized bed, on one of those really, really comfortable memory foam mattresses, with the object of your middle-aged lust could be just as bad as waking up on a pile of gap-toothed skulls. 

Yup. He was definitely going to kill Lance. 

*

He called Romelle the next morning, after Hunk had repeatedly _thwap_ -ed Snorri first into consciousness and then into coming down to Hunk's shop to do something useful. 

She was still taking his calls. 

That was something. 

After the first few uncomfortable minutes where they tried to figure out if they could still use all the little short-hand that years of intimacy had created, or if those got wiped out too with the divorce, like the vows of "forever until I die", Sven said, "Snorri – Sorry. Marcus. Marcus is here."

Romelle sighed, and Sven was surprised to see that she wasn't relieved, but rather exhausted by his news. Well, there was probably a little relief there. More along the lines of "thank god, it's _you_ who has to deal with the boy now" rather than the "Oh sweet mother of mercy, he's alive!" kind of relief he'd been expecting. Which meant that Snorri's little backwater world adventure was tacitly approved of by his mother. 

"Hunk has him doing errands, I think," Sven added, just to say something. 

"Oh. That's good."

"The only thing I don't understand," he said, "is what he's doing here in the first place."

Romelle waved a hand tiredly and said, "Oh you know. Teenage angst, nobody understands me, I don't want to be a Crown Prince if it means I don't get to behead anybody –"

"He wants to behead someone?"

"Yes, and I blame you for that."

Sven wisely decided to not get the whole argument about who, exactly, was the source of their son's sometimes distressingly violent tendencies. 

"Well, how long is he here for?"

"Until he's twenty-five and has his hormone's more or less in check?" Romelle said hopefully, and then sighed and smiled the little smile she gave when she was being funny about a not-so-funny thing. "No, I guess not."

"He can stay here for the summer," Sven said, then added, for the sake of fairness, "An Aurian summer."

"Thank you," Romelle said, and then she hung up without saying goodbye. 

*

"So…" Sven said when they sat down for dinner that night. "How was work?"

Snorri glared at him and made an abortive gesture to rub the back of his head. "Fine," he muttered. 

Sven shot a pleading glance over Snorri's sullen head to where Hunk sat, apparently reveling in the awkwardness of this entire situation. "Hunk?"

"We got through two months worth of old inventory statements!" Hunk said, grinning broadly.

"Oh. That's, uh. That's nice."

"Yup! Only five years and six more months to go!"

Sven opened his mouth to say something, then stopped. He had a sneaking suspicion that Hunk was fucking with him – and not in a good way. Still, best not to make waves right now; the last thing he wanted right now was to deal with Snorri pulling his snotty crown prince act on Hunk, and not only because Hunk had never been particularly impressed with any sort of royalty, snotty or not. 

"Uh," Sven said as the silence stretched on – uncomfortable on his part, but apparently perfectly acceptable for both Hunk and Snorri. "So. How're your sister and brother?"

"I don't know," Snorri snapped. "Why don't you call and ask them?"

"Snorri—"

"It's Marcus," Snorri shouted. "Voltron's balls, Dad, why can't you remember that!"

"Sorry," Sven said. "Sorry. Marcus, I –"

"May I be excused?" Snorri said, standing even as he said it. He stomped off down the hall to the guest room and slammed the door closed with enough force that the walls of Hunk's cabin shook; an impressive feat, given that Hunk apparently thought the best way to build a cabin was to use whole logs of old growth timber with a diameter of at least two feet. 

"Sorry," Sven said, after the last echoes of Snorri's temper died down. "He doesn't have to stay you know. I mean. I can take him and go…" he trailed off, not sure of what he was going to say. Go where? Back to Pollux? Back to Earth? Back to his father's place?

"Sven, it's fine," Hunk said. "He's family."

Sven nodded and let the happy little glow of Hunk's words warm him. And then tried to resolutely ignore the buzz-killing thought that what Hunk meant by that was that he really viewed Sven as his brother and there would be no sexing of any kind going on in this house. Which, really, if Sven had wanted to live with a grumpy teenager and never have sex, he could have just stayed married to Romelle. 

*

He called Romelle again in the morning, after Hunk and Snorri had headed off to town. 

"Listen," he said to Romelle as soon as she came online. "Did Snorri say _who_ he wanted to behead?"

"Well, you figured rather prominently in the list. But so did the Chief Finance Minister, Allura, Crispus, Julia, and the dog, so I wouldn't read too much into that."

"How are Crispus and Julia?"

"They're well," Romelle said, and Sven could read so much into that statement. "They're young. They don't really understand what happened."

Sven nodded and looked for something else to say. 

"You could always visit them yourself," Romelle said. "It's not like you were banished."

"I know," Sven said, suddenly feeling like a coward. He'd run away, when all was said and done, and although a part of that was rooted in the fact that he really couldn't stay on Pollux after the divorce – too much scrutiny, too much curiosity about the ex-Consort – that didn't make up for the fact that he had still left. "And. I'm sorry."

Romelle waved his apology away with the same weary gesture she'd used back during the final days of their marriage. "Done is done," she said. 

"I really—"

"Sven. It's over. Just. Just drop it." And with that Romelle closed the connection and Sven was left alone, staring into the blank screen.

*

Sven spent the rest of that week tiptoeing around Snorri and feeling increasingly jealous over the easy way Hunk had bonded with his son; although who he was really jealous of he couldn't say. Not that he thought Hunk had any designs on Snorri – beyond getting free labor – but still. It seemed unfair that the two of them could sit and laugh and joke together. He was feeling petulant, which was stupid. He was too old to feel petulant. He was old and wise and mature and damn it, he was not about to mope because his son appeared to hate him and the man he wanted to fuck was making his son laugh. 

And besides. Cutting firewood was certainly not moping. It was…exercise. It was healthy living. It was not a way for him to excise his feelings of frustration. 

Of course, a man could only spend so much time chopping firewood before there was no more firewood to chop. 

Sven sighed and put the axe down. He wiped away the sweat on his forehead and looked at the massive pile of firewood he'd just created, and then at his hands which were already developing axe handle calluses. Who the hell was he kidding anyway? He was running away again and—

"Ow!" Sven reached up to rub the top of his head and glared at Hunk, who just smiled beatifically back and held a rolled up newspaper loosely but meaningfully in his right hand. "What the fuck?"

"You looked like you needed some sense beaten into you," Hunk said. "Also, stop it with the firewood. This stuff needs to cure under a tarp before we can use it and I don't have a tarp big enough, and if we stack it up under the eaves of the house we'll end up with a goddamn fort."

"Why don't you just switch to a cold fusion reactor like a sensible person?" Sven said. "Pidge would be able to hook you up."

"I like the smell of firewood," Hunk said. "Also, I'd prefer to keep things that could spontaneously go boom out of my bedroom."

"Yeah, yeah." Sven sat down on the stump he'd been using to split the wood on and looked at Hunk. "So, what sense did you think warranted a head smacking?"

"Oh, couple of things." Hunk sat down beside him and Sven was suddenly struck by just how sweaty and stinky he was. "Marcus. You. You and Marcus."

Sven sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Sorry. I just. I don't know how to relate to him anymore. I mean, he hates me."

"Of course he does. He's a teenager. Also, you made his mother cry. But I really think it's the teenager thing that's doing it."

"Yeah." Sven snorted and looked down at his hands again. The warmth of exertion was beginning to wear off and he could feel the chill in the air – crisp like autumn back home. "I vaguely remember what that's like."

"Good. So remember that. And remember that he's your son and he's confused and also half-alien so who knows what all is going on in his head. It's a phase. He'll snap out of it. But right now he's here and so are you and this may be the last time you two will really be able to bond as people and not, you know. Polluxian royalty."

"You know," Sven said, "technically I'm not—"

Hunk snorted and smacked him on the head with his newspaper again. "Whatever. Polluxian and ex-Polluxian royalty. He was telling me he starts his diplomat training next year, on Zeta Five."

"I didn't know."

"Well, maybe you should talk to him sometime."

"Look, I don't need you lecturing me on what a crappy father I'm being," Sven growled, then batted away Hunk's hand as he raised it to smack him with the newspaper once again. "And stop that."

"I didn't call you a crappy father. Although, you kind of are. I'm just saying, instead of chopping firewood, why don't you man up and talk to your son?"

"All right, all right." Sven sighed, more an exasperated huff than anything else. Just because Hunk was right – just because he was saying out loud all the things Sven had thought – didn't mean Sven had to like it. "I'm just. What if I screw up?"

"Dude. You impregnated his mother while fighting an underground resistance against the armies of Doom. I think you're pretty much well and truly hit the 'screwed up' lottery on that one. Just accept the fact that you'll probably fuck up here and move on."

"Oh thanks, Hunk. That's a real confidence booster right there that is." 

"Sven, I say again: you impregnated his mother while fighting an underground resistance against the armies of Doom. Clearly when you screw up, you do it with confidence. And just because you screw something up doesn't mean it stays that way. I mean, you know. Who knew getting Romelle preggers would be an even better weapon than the Blazing Sword? Plus, you got a pretty good kid out of the deal."

Sven laughed. "Yeah. She, uh. She was definitely terrifying." He bumped Hunk with his shoulder and stayed there, soaking in Hunk's warmth. "So, anything else you want to fix in my life?"

"Yeah." Hunk half turned, and in the golden afternoon sunlight Sven was suddenly struck that despite the new wrinkles and the hint of gray in his hair, Hunk still looked very much like he had when they were young: innocent and open and full of the belief in human goodness. "What's a guy gotta do to get fucked around here?"

Sven stared at him open mouthed and blinked a few times before saying, "What?"

"You heard me. What do I have to do? Hold up a neon sign?"

"I. Uh. What?"

Hunk sighed and shook his head. "Dude, Lance was right about you. Most oblivious bastard ever. I mean, seriously. What did you think I was doing when I moved you into my bedroom?"

"I, uh. I don't know? Being a good friend?"

"Clearly you need to look up the definition of 'good friend'."

"Hey, in my defense, I'd just come from Lance and Keith's place. Where Keith, you know. Propositioned me. Out of friendship. How the fuck was I supposed to know that you weren't just…I don't know. Being friendly."

"Ok, first? Keith and Lance are not normal. Second, being friendly is pulling out the fold out bed in the couch. Thirdly, I know it's been a while for you, but when one guy asks another guy to share his bed it usually means, you know. _Share_ his bed."

"Oh." Sven looked at Hunk – really looked – and then licked his lips. "So. Really?"

"Dude, I was about two nights away from groping you in front of your son. I mean, I was going to give you space and let you deal with the whole divorce thing, and Marcus being here, but clearly you had your head so far up your ass about the whole thing that I'm beginning to suspect that if I let you take charge we'd both die before anything happened." Hunk smiled at him, eyes soft and full of…something. Love, perhaps, or understanding, or lust, or any of the above; all Sven knew was that it made something deep inside him loosen. 

"Oh," Sven said again, then smiled back at Hunk. "Well. All right then."

*

"Do you have any idea just how hard it is to try and have sex with someone when your teenage son is in the next room?" Sven said, the next time he called Lance. 

"Yes. Why do you think we sent him to you?"


End file.
